Kris (13 page)

“No, please!” I said, “I'm happy you are here.”

I jumped up in my very clumsy way to clear a place for Sarah to sit with me nearer the furnace.

“Don't,” she said.

What a curiously beautiful girl she was.

“That really isn't necessary,” she continued.

I ignored her and continued to clear a place so she could join me. “I wanted to thank you for the coat. Please warm yourself” I said.

Sarah looked away without speaking, crossing her arms as if to feign indifference.

“It's really so soft and comfortable,” I said to her. “And I know it will keep me warm.”

“Which coat?” Sarah asked. She looked at me defiantly, feigning innocence as if she had no knowledge of what I was speaking about.

“The big red one. I wanted to thank you for it. It's so beautiful.”

“I'm sorry?” Sarah continued, unwilling to take credit for the gift.

“All right,” I said as I turned away, surrendering to the discomfort of the moment.

Then I heard a small giggle and turned back to see what she found that was funny. She melted me with the warmth of her gentle smile.

We looked at each other for a long time before she walked to me, sat down, and took my hands in hers. “I didn't want you getting lost in a snowdrift delivering toys. That's why I decided it should be red. To stand out against the snow.” Then, almost embarrassed, she added, “And because it reminded me of your big heart.”

“Well, you aren't a very good liar,” I said, but as I heard the words spill from my mouth, I realized they had come in far too abrupt a manner.

Sarah ran her red-stained fingers over the toy wolf in my hands as if she were petting it. “I guess we have something in common,” she said coyly, reminding me of my denial and obvious lies regarding Kendra's wooden duck.

Now it was my turn to be embarrassed, and I was curt with her as I tried to deflect her comment. “I thought you promised not to bother me.”

“I guess I am just a bad liar,” Sarah said, smiling. She held up her stained fingers with a smile and wiggled them as if the dye had made them sticky or stiff.

If I told her what she wanted to know, I would ruin everything. Even if the town didn't make me leave, Sarah would never see me in the same way again. “I don't want to talk about this with you,” I confessed. But I
instantly regretted my words and I could see they only compounded the hurtful things I had said to her earlier.

“Fine,” Sarah said as she rose and took her leave.

I stood up as I called after her, “I'm fully capable of caring for myself.” But we both knew that too was a lie.

Fiercely she looked back at me and then stormed right up to face me. “Yes, I know,” she said coldly as she lifted herself on tiptoes. “That, of course, is why you stay here.”

Her statement stung me sharply, but I could not contest the truth. In an effort to regain the upper hand, I challenged her again. “And I am supposed to trust you? You just lied to me.”

She took a breath. With Sarah on her toes, her eyes were only slightly beneath my own. “And I would lie just as hard to keep your secrets safe,” she whispered.

I could feel her breath's warmth on my lips. She looked through me as if to penetrate my heart. Yet I found myself still desperately unable to lower my defenses.

“Don't worry, you won't have to,” I said and sat down.

How I dreaded those words that escaped from my lips and tore at Sarah like the teeth of my saw.

“I'm warm enough now,” she whispered to me. There was a sense of deep hurt in her voice as she lowered herself to her heels.

Somehow I needed to stop her. “Sarah?” I said gently.

She looked down at her feet like an injured bird. “What?”

“Do you promise?” I asked.

“Do I promise?” She looked up at me as quiet tears washed her face. Then her eyes transformed with realization. “Yes,” she said solemnly and sincerely, “I promise.”

I could not continue to look into her tear-filled eyes. So I turned my back to her, placed the toy wolf away from me on the table, and nervously began to whittle with a knife and small flat piece of wood that had been left lying on the worktable.

I could feel Sarah behind me, watching, waiting.

Hesitantly, I started. “Josef and Gabriella took me in … because … my own father is gone.”

“And what of your mother?” Sarah asked.

There were no words I could find to sum this up simply, directly. How could I begin to tell a story that I did not fully know? How could I venture down a path where my heart did not wish to go?

I could hear Sarah as she pulled the stool behind me and quietly sat. She placed a hand gently on my back, and I knew my secrets were secure with her and that here my heart was safe.

“She is gone with him.”

I ran my fingers along the edges of the wood, felt the roughness and unfinished nature of the cuts I had made, and thought about the ways I would shape the wood and smooth its coarseness to complete it.

“I'm sorry,” Sarah said, and she waited patiently for me to tell her more.

“He was the first,” I said to her, haltingly.

“Your father?” Sarah asked.

“We thought it would pass,” I said. “But after the elders, it took the babies and children, and then everyone. Our world was filled with the constant toil of disease and loss.”

I spoke to her softly. Carefully. With painful breaths that stabbed at my weakened spirit. I spoke about the terror that raged through our village and the dangerous and perverse fears that fanned the growing
fires of destruction. I spoke of the times when logic no longer prevailed, when illness consumed the feeble and vulnerable, and brought once strong and vital men and women to the door of death. I spoke of all the pain and suffering the fires were meant to eradicate and the towering columns of smoke that climbed the sky. But we had not triumphed over the disease as we had wanted. We had not cleansed our lands. The fires had only taken our homes, not the illness.

And in the silence that followed, I thought about the words forgiveness, giving, and living, and how elemental they were. And I thought giving must be the essence of our lives. Could a soul once broken be made whole by giving of itself?

“You are from the mountains?” Sarah said to me, breaking the silence.

I nodded quietly in response and listened for a moment, awaiting some condemnation or other, but none followed.

“We tried to burn the sickness behind us,” I said. “My mother was weak. She could barely feed Nikko.”

“Your brother? You have siblings?” Sarah asked softly, slowly. “Were there others? Other brothers and sisters?”

“I was the oldest. I wanted to take care of them. My mother did not believe I was strong enough. I begged her and argued with her, but she wouldn't listen.”

Sarah gently placed the side of her face against my back, rubbing her hand back and forth as if to wipe away my pain.

What carpenter had carved a heart like hers? I wondered, as I leaned slightly back against her hand.

“I put them all into the sleigh,” I said. “I was the one who found them homes. The one who left them there alone. My mother didn't care. She
was dying and didn't want to know what became of them. I was the one forced to make those choices.”

I sliced at the strip of wood before me, making deep gouges and ripping at its edges.

“Be careful with that,” Sarah said.

“I abandoned my brothers and sisters. One after another. My brother Garin jumped off the sleigh, and I didn't stop him. The others I left stranded before strangers that I prayed would take them into their homes and shelter them from the bitter cold.”

“Kris,” Sarah said softly in an effort to comfort me.

I carved with unconscious hands that moved of their own volition.

“We ran from the flames we left behind, but we could not outrun the sickness in my mother. I carried her with us in that sleigh until she died, and left her body in a snow bank to decay.”

I cut and punctured the wood against my hands.

“This Christmas I couldn't find Nikko. The family that took him in when I left him at their cabin had vanished. He's gone.”

I looked back at Sarah to share the fullness of my regret. “I lost him. It was my fault. My mother was right. I was weak and could not be trusted to care for them. They were only children, and I abandoned them. Left them to survive alone. That is who I am, Sarah. I am sorry, but that is who I am.”

“You gave them a chance to live, Kris. What more could you or anyone give?”

I held the scrap of wood in my hand, now a delicate wooden snowflake, like the one I had left with Nikko. And as I ran my fingers across its edges, blood trickled onto the wood and dripped onto my worktable. I snapped the stained snowflake in half and let it fall to the floor.

“Your hand!” Sarah exclaimed. She took off her scarf and wrapped it around the palm of my hand, tying it in place to stop the blood from the cuts unconsciously left there. When the bleeding had finally ceased, Sarah stooped to pick up the broken snowflake. “These carvings.” She looked to the wooden wolf on the table, “these toys, they are for them, aren't they?”

“That's all over now.”

What do you mean?” Sarah inquired.

“They fought over it. The girls fought over my duck and broke it. They aren't my brothers and sisters anymore. They have new families now. It's wrong of me to remind them they are any different.”

“Your toys are special, Kris,” Sarah said to me soothingly. “Why not make toys for each of them?”

“Each of them?” I asked, trying to understand her point.

“Your brothers and sisters have new families, with whom you share a common tie and a common love. These other children, Kris. They are your family now, too.”

Sarah stunned me with her words. Then she continued.

“You have given the most precious thing you have, your love, in sharing your brothers and sisters with those who embraced them,” Sarah said. “You are part of that love, part of that family just like your brothers and sisters are. You have a talent, Kris. Your toys are special. Now even more children can find joy from those gifts.”

Sarah had turned me inside out cutting away my pain and doubt. To offer such a stunning notion, wrapped in a simple solution.

I laughed. Then I kissed her.

There are some moments so sublime in life they transcend the ability to describe. So I will refrain from trying. But I will say this. Kissing her was the best and smartest moment of my fourteen-year-old life.

When we stepped apart, she looked at me in stunned silence.

I looked at her in stunned silence.

We looked at each other across that space which just short moments ago had contained both of us.

And softly, all she said was, “You should laugh more.”

And I did laugh more. I made a habit of it. It took time for the boys to get used to it, but laughter is infectious. Josef and Gabby were the first to catch the symptoms, then Jonas, and lastly Marcus. Noel never seemed appreciative of the laughter, unless it was cruelly inspired, no matter how hard we tried to include him.

Over the coming seasons I attained my fifteenth year and grew more than a hand span taller. I was thick as an old oak and could have lifted one of Noah's church pews by myself if I had to. And in the middle of one irregular night I sprouted hair everywhere: my chest, my arms, the back of my knuckles and, most annoyingly, my face.

Sarah found no end of delight in teasing me over the red fuzz that covered my cheeks and chin. At first I tried to shave every day with my knife, but time and the drive to avoid cutting my own throat finally convinced me to leave the growth.

Sarah and I hadn't kissed again since that glorious moment. Not that I didn't want to; I dreamt about it every day. First, I really wasn't brave enough to try again. Second, we never found ourselves alone, which was probably due to the brilliant and watchful eyes of Josef and Gabriella.
More importantly, if we had been caught we would have been kept apart. It was too much to risk, for a day without Sarah left me aching and feeling hollow.

Another year had passed and found me healthy as a lark and happy as a bear. Some people would say it's the other way around, but here's something I have learned: waking up at the break of dawn singing keeps you healthy, and if you have ever watched a lazy old bear, they sure look happy. I was aware that Sarah still cared for me from the thousands of slight and small touches we would sneak in our passing. Looking back, I think the only people we were fooling were ourselves.